2002

Stanley Burnshaw began to publish poems in the 1920s and founded his own verse journal in 1925. After serving as coeditor and drama critic of the New Masses weekly (1934-1936), he entered book publishing, directing the Dryden Press until 1958, when he joined Henry Holt. The first of his nineteen earlier works, André Spire and His Poetry, appeared in 1934 and the last in 1990, A Stanley Burnshaw Reader, with an introduction by Denis Donoghue.

The present volume—the definitive Burnshaw collection—offers all the poems he wishes to preserve and a full representation of his prose, including My Friend, My Father in its entirety. The Collected Poems and Selected Prose is vital reading for anyone wishing to be fully acquainted with the man whom Karl Shapiro called "one of the best-respected men of letters of our time."

Foreword by Thomas F. Staley

Early and Late Testament (1952)

Early and Late Testament

(Preamble)

Time of Brightness

(First Testament)

Bread

(Second Testament)

The Iron Lands

Do I Know Their Names?

For a Workers' Road-Song

All Day the Chill...

Will You Remake These Worlds?

(Third Testament)

A Coil of Glass (I)

Anchorage in Time (I)

(Fourth Testament)

This War Is Love

A Coil of Glass (II)

Hero Statues

(Fifth Testament)

Dialogue of the Heartbeat

The Bridge

Heartbeat Obbligato

End of the Flower-World

(Sixth Testament)

Looking for Papa

Among Trees of Light

Coasts of Darkness

In Strength of Singleness

(Seventh Testament)

Blood

It Was Never This Quiet...

When Was It Lost?

Woodpecker

Voices in Dearness...

Song Aspires to Silence

Anchorage in Time (II)

(Eighth Testament)

Two Men Fell in the Irish Sea

Poetry: The Art

Odes and Lyrics

To a Young Girl Sleeping

Innocence

Wave

Event in a Field

The Fear

Light Outlives All Shape

Midnight: Deserted Pavements

Random Pieces of a Man

Waiting in Winter

Outcast of the Waters

Restful Ground

Days

Driving Song

Willowy Wind

The Hollow River

Second-Hand Poems

Anonymous Alba: En un vergier soiz folha d'albespi

Orléans: Le temps a laissié...

Spire: Nudités

Spire: Ce n'est pas toi...

Spire: Nativité

Spire: Un parfum éternel...

Spire: Baisers

Spire: Friselis

Spire: Volupté

Caged in an Animal's Mind (1963)

Thoughts about a Garden

Historical Song of Then and Now

Summer

Ravel and Bind

Caged in an Animal's Mind

Ancient of Nights

Symbol Curse

The Valley Between

Thoughts about a Garden

Petitioner Dogs

Father-Stones

Night of the Canyon Sun

A Recurring Vision

Midnight Wind to the Tossed

The Axe of Eden

Listen:

Random Pieces of a Man

Thoughts of the War and My Daughter

A River

Surface

Preparation for Self-Portrait in Black Stone

Mornings of St. Croix

Boy over a Stream

Letter from One Who Could Not Cross the Frontier

Voyage: Journal Entry

Nightmare in a Workshop

Seven

Clay

A Rose Song

Guide's Speech on a Road near Delphi

Song of Nothings: In the Mountain's Shadow at Delphi

I Think among Blank Walls

Seedling Air

Three in Throes

Modes of Belief

House in St. Petersburg

Time Is a Double Line

Second-Hand Poems

Akhmatova: The Muse

George: Denk nicht zu viel...

Éluard: L'Amoureuse

Von Hofmannsthal: Eigene Sprache

Alberti: El ángel bueno

In the Terrified Radiance (1972)

The Terrified Radiance

The Terrified Radiance

To a Crow

Innocent War

Gulls...

Central Park: Midwinter

The Finding Light

Erstwhile Hunter

Their Singing River (I)

Not to Bereave...

Underbreathing Song

Emptiness...

Procreations

Women and Men

Movie Poster on a Subway Wall

End of a Visit

The Echoing Shape

Summer Morning Train to the City

Women and Men

Terah

Isaac

Talmudist

What Plato Was

Song of Succession

En l'an...

Dialogue of the Stone Other

In the Coastal Cities

Will of Choice

Chanson Innocente

The Rock

Condor Festival

Three Friends

We Brought You Away As Before...

Friend across the Ocean

Wildness

The Hero of Silence

I. Dedication: An Eternity of Words

II. Master and Pupils

III. Soliloquy from a Window: Man and Flowers

IV. Dialogue before Waking

V. Fume

VI. Into the Blond Torrent

VII. The Waking

Second-Hand Poems

Paz: Más allá del amor

Spire: Retour des Martinets

Alberti: Canción del ángel sin suerte

Alberti: El ángel mentiroso

Verhaeren: La Bêche

Akhmatova: from "The White Flock"

Unamuno: Me destierro...

Mirages: Travel Notes in the Promised Land (1977)

I. First Landscape

II. Generations of Terror

III. Blind Tale

IV. Seventh-day Mirage

V. The Rock

VI. Talmudist

VII. Marching Song

VIII. Choices

Later Poems (1977- )

Message to Someone Four Hundred Nights Away

The House Hollow

Argon

Florida Seaside

Old Enough at Last to Be Unsolemn

Mind, If You Mourn at All

To Wake Each Dawn

Their Singing River (II)

Speech, the Thinking-Miracle

Man on a Greensward

Social Poems of the Depression (from The New Masses and The Iron Land [1936])

Stanley Burnshaw has received many honors, including an award for creative writing from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, honorary degrees from the City University of New York and Hebrew Union College, and a "Special Stanley Burnshaw Issue" of Agenda (London). He divides his time between Martha's Vineyard and Key Biscayne.

"Stanley Burnshaw has played an active role on the literary scene since the late 1920s in many capacities—poet, critic, editor-publisher, fiction writer, memoirist, translator, anthologist, and theorist of poetry and translation. Besides collecting most of his poems for the first time, something which has long been overdue, this book gives a broad overview of his prose writing, including the whole last section of his biography/memoir of Robert Frost; a key chapter from his classic work of poetic theory, The Seamless Web; the definitive last word on his controversy with Wallace Stevens; and the whole text of his superb memoir/novella, My Friend, My Father. These are pieces that will never go out of fashion.

As a poet, Burnshaw is a meticulous craftsman with a fine ear and a considerable lyric gift. The first section, Early and Late Testament, is not his strongest, but there are many fine poems here. Caged in an Animal's Mind (1963) and In the Terrified Radiance (1972) show Burnshaw at the peak of his powers as a poet, breaking through to an essential clarity and simplicity, as do some of the last poems. Burnshaw, now in his nineties, has made numerous small revisions in poems all through the book, and every single one of them is an improvement, [which] shows what a conscious craftsman and creative student of verse he remains.

In sum, this book not only fills out the historical record of an important and enduring literary career, but also offers a wonderful range of good reading in both prose and poetry—in short, a living body of work."

—Morris Dickstein, Distinguished Professor of English and Senior Fellow, Center for the Humanities, Graduate Center of the City University of New York